While you may think that your wedding is “your day,” you may be surprised to find that your guest list can soon be filled with strangers. Who invited these wedding crashers, anyway? You want the people you love to celebrate your day with you, not friends of friends of friends. Plus, each guest represents money out of your pocket. With per-person catering rates reaching into the triple digits, managing the guest list soon becomes a financial priority that you can’t ignore.

Guest List Etiquette

There’s that word again: etiquette. Weddings are filled with traditions, emotions and protocols. Etiquette helps dictate the do’s and don’ts of the entire day including the wording of the invitation and the guest list. According to Miss Manners, many brides mistakenly believe that their wedding is their day. Not so, it’s a two-family celebration.

Yes, the bride is the center of attention. However, two families are joining into one. The guest list is not just about the bride and groom and their friends. Rather the wedding guest list will be composed of people representing both sides of the family. The bride and groom will have a set of friends and colleagues that they will be inviting but that’s not the end of the list. Both the bride and the groom’s parents will also have people that they would like to invite. This includes relatives (close and distant) as well as personal friends and associates.

In this scenario, three couples each have a set of guests that they will be inviting to the wedding. Let’s take a look at the numbers and see how quickly the guest list can spiral out of control. Before doing so, how many guests do you consider ideal? 15? 30? 60? 100?

Now that you have a number in mind, think about how many friends and co-workers you want to invite. Now consider your fiancé’s group of friends. How many is that? Write this number down.

Count all of your immediate family members, on both sides. Add this number to your list.

Next, make an educated guess about the number of people your parents might invite. Include all close friends, aunts, uncles, grandparents, business partners, co-workers, and other people in their circle. Write this number down and do the same thing for your fiancé’s parents.

How’s your list looking? Did your intimate 30-person affair blossom into a party approaching 100? It doesn’t take long for this to happen with three couples involved (and this doesn’t take dates and children into account). What if either of your parents are divorced? Or both sets? The more sets of parents involved, the more likely it will be that each couple will have a guest list of their own.

What does this mean from a guest list etiquette standpoint? It means that it’s not all about you and that you will need to work together to come up with a guest list that everyone can live with. Understand that you will be among many strangers on your wedding day though each of these people will have been handpicked by your loved ones. Rather than considering the guests you haven’t yet met strangers, remember the saying, “Any friend of yours is a friend of mine.”

Setting the Guest List Budget

Before laying down the guest-list rules with your parents and future in-laws, find out exactly how much each guest is going to cost. Even if your parents are paying for the wedding, you should know this figure. Find out how much your reception site or caterer charges per-person and then do the math. For example, if the menu that you’ve selected is going to cost $75 per person and you’d like to have about 100 guests, you should know what that translates into based on your guest list. $75 per person times100 guests equals $7500 – and that’s just for food. Other expenses include beverages, alcohol, wedding cake, service charges, tax, party favors, party rentals (chairs, tables, etc…), and the room rental. The more people you have, the bigger reception site you will need, which further increases your cost.

If $7500 doesn’t seem so bad, now consider the 100 guests. Of these guests, how many are single? Don’t overlook the fact that single wedding guests will want to bring a date. If you have 20 single guests each bringing a date, your guest list has just swelled to 120 people. These 20 dates just added $1500 to your wedding guest-list budget. Now, think about the guests that aren’t single. Do they have children? Let’s face it; most wedding guests want to bring their children to weddings. Many people feel that their family is a package deal. If you have 15 couples who each have three children, that’s 45 more people you may not have been counting on. At the full per-person rate, that’s $3375 added to your budget. Suddenly, your $7500 catering estimate has swelled to over $12,000.

Fortunately, you can manage your guest list before it gets out of hand. Start with a dollar figure and work backwards. For example, if you can only afford $10,000 for catering and have your heart set on the $75 per-person menu, divide $10,000 by $75. At these rates, the maximum number of guests you can afford is 133 including dates and children.

Dividing the Guest List

Now that you have a firm number of guests in mind, get together with both sets of parents and discuss your wedding guest list. Let them know what the maximum number of guests that you can accommodate is. You’ll have several ways to approach dividing up the available slots. One way is to divide the guest list equally. In a perfect world, this would be easy. However, you and your groom may have just a few close friends while your parents social circles might extend much further including relatives.

Have each couple create a list in order of importance with the understanding that those on the bottom may not make the cut. This doesn’t need to be done in one sitting. In fact, make a date for a week or two later to fine tune the guest list. Ask everyone to break their list into tiers with a top tier, second tier and bottom tier. The top tier should include relatives and close family members. The second tier should include close friends. The bottom tier will include co-workers, colleagues, clients, and other associates. Make sure that everyone accounts for dates and children. Making sure that these additional guests are accounted for right from the start will keep your guest list from going out of control.

Before the second meeting, ask everyone involved for a “tier count” with each tier having its own subtotal. First get a total and see if it jibes with your budget. If not, you’ll have to adjust. The goal is to be able to accommodate all first- and second-tier guests.

Managing the guest list must be handled early on otherwise it can quickly grow beyond your wildest expectations. Realize that you must accommodate guests that you’ve never met as they are guests of your parents or in-laws. Work together to ensure that everyone concerned can invite their top two tiers of relatives and close friends, and most of all, have a blast!

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